Linux Foundation creates Agentic AI Foundation to steward open standards for autonomous AI systems

The Linux Foundation has unveiled the Agentic AI Foundation, a new industry group set up to coordinate open source tools, standards, and governance for agentic AI, with founding contributions from Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit that supports many of the world’s open source software and standards initiatives, has announced the creation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).

The new body is designed to act as a neutral home for open source agentic AI projects, focusing on interoperability, shared standards, and community-governed development. Agentic AI refers to systems that can make decisions and carry out tasks with limited human instruction.

As organizations begin adopting autonomous AI systems to support software development, operations, and workflow execution, the Linux Foundation is positioning AAIF as an attempt to avoid a patchwork of incompatible frameworks. The foundation says the industry is at a point where shared protocols and infrastructure will determine how quickly agent-capable systems can be deployed in real settings.

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation, says AAIF will support long-term stability in a rapidly changing environment. “We are seeing AI enter a new phase, as conversational systems shift to autonomous agents that can work together. Within just one year, MCP, AGENTS.md and goose have become essential tools for developers building this new class of agentic technologies,” he says.

“Bringing these projects together under the AAIF ensures they can grow with the transparency and stability that only open governance provides. The Linux Foundation is proud to serve as the neutral home where they will continue to build AI infrastructure the world will rely on.”

MCP, goose, and AGENTS.md transferred into the foundation

Three major technologies form the foundation’s initial project group: Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), Block’s goose framework, and OpenAI’s AGENTS.md format.

MCP, created by Anthropic, provides a universal method for connecting AI systems to tools, APIs, and data sources. The protocol has been adopted by products including Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Microsoft Copilot. It is now used in more than ten thousand published MCP servers ranging from developer utilities to enterprise deployments. Its transfer to AAIF places the protocol under independent governance.

Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer at Anthropic, says the move is intended to secure the protocol’s long-term openness. “MCP started as an internal project to solve a problem our own teams were facing. When we open sourced it in November 2024, we hoped other developers would find it as useful as we did,” he says. “A year later, it’s become the industry standard for connecting AI systems to data and tools, used by developers building with the most popular agentic coding tools and enterprises deploying on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.”

Goose, contributed by Block, is a local-first agent framework that combines language models with extensible tools and standardized MCP-based integrations. The project supports developers building agents that operate with predictable, auditable behavior. Block’s contribution shifts the project from corporate stewardship to community governance.

Manik Surtani, Head of Open Source at Block, says the decision aligns with the company’s broader stance on open AI infrastructure. “We’re at a critical moment for AI. The technology that will define the next decade, that promises to be the biggest engine of economic growth since the Internet, can either remain closed and proprietary for the benefit of few, or be driven by open standards, open protocols, and open access for the benefit of all,” he says.

OpenAI’s contribution, AGENTS.md, is a markdown convention that provides coding agents with a consistent location for project-specific instructions. More than sixty thousand open source projects and tools already use the format, which aims to make agent behavior more reliable across different codebases and build systems.

Global technology firms sign on as early members

Membership spans a long list of cloud providers, enterprise vendors, and AI tooling companies. Platinum members include Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare. Gold and Silver members represent organizations across infrastructure, developer tooling, enterprise software, and open source ecosystems.

The foundation will adopt the Linux Foundation’s established governance model, where project maintainers and steering committees make technical decisions and corporate members participate through defined, transparent processes. Project inclusion will be based on adoption, governance maturity, and community health rather than commercial scale.

Supporters say AAIF is intended to create durable, interoperable foundations for agentic AI at a time when enterprise adoption depends on predictable behavior, security controls, and the ability to integrate with existing systems.

Nick Cooper, Member of the Technical Staff at OpenAI, says AGENTS.md was designed with this in mind. “For AI agents to reach their full potential, developers and enterprises need trustworthy infrastructure and accessible tools to build on. By co-founding the AAIF and donating AGENTS.md, we’re helping establish open, transparent practices that make AI agent development more predictable, interoperable, and safe,” he says.